


The Static

by VinHampton



Category: Original Work, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dreams, Hallucinations, Logic, Madness, Nightmares, Original Fiction, POV Female Character, POV First Person, POV Original Character, Psychosis, Sleep, Twitter, Vinlock - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 04:10:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1730654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VinHampton/pseuds/VinHampton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look into a broken mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Static

You have all experienced the static. It is that strange, transient period between sleep and waking, between waking and sleep, where the mind seems interested in erecting its own gates of logic and syntax is melted like ore into something so alien that you may occasionally catch the tail-end of it (a word or a sound) and find yourself struggling to make sense of it. That is the static. The auditory hallucinations; you know they are not real (or at least they should not be real) but they sound as real as your partner as he snores beside you; as real as the unceasing brag of your own heart (which, when you come to think of it, always sounds either far too fast or far too slow, but that is another panic attack for another day). 

Your eyes open. You know from the pounding in your chest that you have experienced a nightmare but it is too oily and elusive to grasp. Your mind is in flight mode, engaging hyperconsciousness as a defence mechanism. Perhaps you manage to sink a claw into one slippery image. In this case, blood staining the infinite, snow-covered plains of Siberia. You know this image well - it is one you have often encountered in your sleep. It almost amuses you for a moment. You’ve only ever been to Siberia once and the trip was of no great personal importance. Your mind, however, has clung to it as some sort of metaphor. Frankly, you are disappointed by how it lacks complexity as a literary device. Pure, Russian snow tainted with blood. How novel. 

If nothing else, it serves to confirm you have experienced a nightmare. The problem, however, begins when you go to turn around. You want to turn around to look at your lover [anchor]; you want to inhale as deeply as you can [breathe]; you want this in order to confirm you are fully conscious again [control]. But where the static should have dissipated by now, yours remains. You are not sure why this is. Perhaps it is because you are an animal devoted to patterns. Perhaps it is because you have trained your mind to function within the parameters of too many sets of syntax, too many languages, too many codes. Perhaps that is why it chooses this time to shred them all into ribbons and use the pieces to create its own. 

It begins.  
[SetBooleanMind]

Which, in and of itself is flawed. Mind is not a variable to be programmed and recalled; it should be a structure within which the logic is contained. Moreover, it is certainly not a boolean, and not limited to dichotomy. 

Your logic is flawed. But it persists. 

{ResetSleep}

As if it were a program to be called. 

It continues: your mind in an endless Error loop. Sometimes, the cogs align and it moves forward to the next step. Otherwise, it is caught in a cycle for… what? Minutes? Hours? You lose track of time. Or is {Time} also a function? 

It has been over a month since you started to lose your mind. Perhaps you have been losing your mind your whole life. Nevertheless, you are used to the process by now. This doesn’t make it any easier to digest. Of some comfort is the fact that the pills you are taking are working. Your capacity for self examination, for self analysis {this} {here} {now} tells you this is something to be waited out. So you wait. 

And slowly, after minutes, or hours, the static is not so loud. You catch a string of something in French as it fades away. Somewhere in the bottom right of your head. Is that your temporal lobe? And soon you are able to move. 

You test yourself.  
Who am I? Vivienne Hampton.  
What day is it? May 11.  
Where am I? Lena Gardens, London. Home.


End file.
